POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Trivial trigonometry : Re: Trivial trigonometry Server Time
9 Oct 2024 04:16:49 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Trivial trigonometry  
From: Darren New
Date: 1 Dec 2009 16:49:16
Message: <4b158f5c$1@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
>   I don't think you can talk about amplitudes after claiming so firmly that
> photons are not waves.

Here's another analogy that might help.

You're flipping coins. You notice that coins come up 50% heads and 50% 
tails.  You say "How can that be, if every coin has to come up either heads 
or tails? How do you get a coin coming up only 50% heads?"

Well, in spite of that, every *other* measurement tells you a coin comes up 
heads or tails, never 50% of each.

Same thing with photons. There doesn't have to be waves to get an 
interference pattern, just interference. But what's interfering is the 
possibilities, not the electrons. Just like the thing that's 1/2 in the 
coins is that each possibility is only half likely, when any given 
individual coin flip always comes up 100% heads or 100% tails.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.


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